Immortality
by Grilled Cheesby
Summary: (He learned the language of flowers when he attended the academy. As useless as it was, he could never not know something. He needed to know all, regardless of the information's worth in the overall scheme of things. Red geraniums: protect.) AiIchi; Hanahaki Disease Drabble.


**Summary:**_ (He learned the language of flowers when he attended the academy. As useless as it was, he could never not know something. He needed to know all, regardless of the information's worth in the overall scheme of things._

_Red geraniums: protect.)_

**just a little drabble i thought of while at work.**

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**Immortality**

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Sousuke doesn't notice it until it's too late.

He feels an odd flutter in his chest, a faint tickle in his throat, and he brushes it off. He has no time to be sick, his plans a constant balancing act. He has no time to contemplate the strange itching sensation that's managed to climb its way into his throat and stay there.

(He doesn't know that it starts the moment he lays eyes on a young Kurosaki Ichigo. He doesn't know it's a warning.)

He grows smug with satisfaction as his plans fall into place, his kind and considerate mask never wavering. He has Tōsen's complete loyalty and Gin is as amusing as ever. His plans progress and the tickle remain faint and at the back of his mind.

Then he meets Kurosaki's eyes for the first time and the tickle becomes an agitating prod in his chest. His lungs feel rattled every time he thinks about the teen. He learns to push it aside, focuses on the Hougyoku and his self-assigned quest. He coughs sometimes, only in his chambers. He can feel something threatening to rise up and out of him, but it never comes to anything. He can feel unease prickle in his mind, but he is above any disease. He is Aizen Sousuke and once he merges with the Hougyoku, he will no longer have to give any thought to the rather persistent chest cold he's had for what seems like years.

_(It seems like years because it's existed for years; festering, growing, laying roots inside him. He doesn't notice.)_

He coughs up blood the day he fuses successfully with the Hougyoku.

_(The itch goes away; so do any other feelings besides greed and hedonism.)_

When he is broken, captured, defeated, his throat crackles as he hacks up an obstruction in his throat. Before he's knocked unconscious, before his senses are sealed, he sees a single petal covered in blood.

_(He doesn't learn until later that the petal would've been a startling red even without the blood.)_

He's in and out of consciousness for what seems like years.

_(It's days; weeks maybe. He remembers snippets of conversations.)_

He is surrounded by darkness, only a red bloom keeping him company.

_("What is it?"_

_"A flower."_

_"No way! What kind?"_

_"Looks like a… Geranium maybe?"_

_"Huh.")_

When he regains the use of his senses, he almost chokes getting the ball of petals out of his throat. He coughs and hacks, blood and hot red petals fleeing from his open mouth. When he finally stops, breathes in air for his aching lungs, he stares in numb exhaustion at the petals littering the ground before him. He's tired, weak, slowly dying now that his disease doesn't have the Hougyoku keeping it at bay. He will die within a fortnight.

_(He learned the language of flowers when he attended the academy. As useless as it was, he could never not know something. He needed to know all, regardless of the information's worth in the overall scheme of things._

_Red geraniums: protect.)_

The day he almost chokes spitting up a bundle of flowers, mostly intact, he knows he won't live through the night. He can feel the roots gathering on the inside of his lungs, pain unlike anything he's felt before. The leaves and stems of the plant are suffocating, leading him to take shallow breaths with quick, forced chest movements.

He doesn't ask to see anyone.

_(Because he can not speak without losing consciousness.)_

Aizen Sousuke dies while restrained in Muken. He is surrounded by red geranium petals and blood. No one talks about the cause of death because half of them don't care how he died and the other half don't believe it, even if they saw it.

Aizen Sousuke, dying from unrequited love? Not likely.

_(The day after Ichigo learns of Aizen's death, he awakes in the middle of the night with a violent cough. When he finally gets his breathing under control, a red spotted purple bud sits innocently on his floor._

_"What?" he asks in confusion, throat sore and mouth filled with a coppery taste._

_He will get no answers. All he will ever have are the globe amaranths he coughs up when feeling particularly melancholy.)_

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**Geranium, Red: protection, preference**

**Globe amaranth: unfading love, immortality**


End file.
